Community

You know what I love? People that work together.

There is just nothing like being a member of a community. By surrounding yourself with like minded individuals who all bring incredibly different perspectives to the table, you cannot fail. The possibilities really are endless. Your potential growth is only as limited as you allow it to be - once you open up to a community and really make connections, and follow those connections to new connections, only you can limit how far you can go, how much you can grow, how big your community can be!

And my community has grown enormously recently! I started a Facebook Storenvy community group about five months ago, which also led to Storenvy community member chats on Twitter once a week (Wednesdays at 12CST if anyone wants to join in!). Through these two resources, I have made so many friends! We have daily share posts, where we all work together to promote each others Storenvy shops. We support one another, help each other with design and marketing ideas, help new users set up their shops. We learn and grow together. And it's awesome. It really is. I have found so many amazing new shops through these groups, and even swapped some Mon-stors for holiday gifts for people on my list this year with members of the group. :) It really is a great thing, watching people go from strangers, to friends, to a community that works together seamlessly to help each other!

One of the first things I do every morning after the kidlet gets to school is grab some coffee and check the Storenvy community group, set up the daily share post and item of the day from a member's shop, and see what everyone has been up to. It's a great way to start the day, kind of like my version of a coffee date with my fellow Enviers every morning, and it gets me amped for the studio! :) If you have a creative business I highly recommend joining a community of like minded individuals - even if it is just an online group of people, it is so wonderful to have that outlet to inspire and motivate you, to go to with questions or to be there to offer advice for someone. It makes the bad days more bearable and the great days more awesome when you have people to talk to who can relate!

I also became a part of another community recently, after meeting Kristina Streeter on Twitter! :) I had linked up luanded.com on her Small Business Saturday shop hop post a few weeks ago, and she asked to feature my shop on her blog! After that she mentioned a monster that she liked... which showed up on her doorstep a week later as a surprise gift for being so awesome! :) Upon receiving Greffly, Kristina asked if I would like to be a part of her A-list, which has turned out to be an incredible thing!

The A-list is a community of small businesses, from handmade shops to bakers and photographers, that Kristina has tried either through buying their products or in my case, receiving one as a gift! :) The A-list has about 20 members, and there's a forum board for us to connect on as well as a weekly Twitter chat! Kristina does free promotions and marketing for people on her A-list so long as they are participating in the community and supporting one another - it's as simple as retweeting a shop link from a fellow A-list member or posting some of their items to Wanelo.com! And in exchange, you have Kristina and the other A-list members supporting you. It's really wonderful to pull together and help each other grow and it honestly takes less than five minutes a day to help several shops you know and love out by sharing something from their shop to your Facebook or Twitter account.*

{*This goes for everyone, everywhere - it is so easy to help small businesses grow, to support people and brands you love! Just show your fandom by sharing}

Kristina has gone above and beyond anything I ever expected to get from a free third party marketing service with her A-list in the five weeks that I have been a member - My fan base and audience has grown, traffic to my sites is up, I am making new, awesome friends every day through Kristina and the A-list members and lots of monsters have been adopted by people browsing the A-list site! It's so incredible to be a part of this, and know that by sharing a fellow A-list member's shop I am helping them grow as well!

And now, Kristina has just released something EPIC for us A-list members and the public alike - a holiday gift guide! You can flip through the pages (just like the Toys'R Us holiday catalog, so cool!) and read shop bios, item descriptions and see pictures from each shop, and there are navigation links at the top to visit each A-list members shop! It is pretty awesome, I won't lie. I loved reading all the bios and learning more about my fellow A-list members. :) You should definitely check it out and do some holiday shopping!

Oh, and did I mention there's an epic coupon code for my shop in there? ;)

Click here to view!

To wrap this up, I just want to say that I am so thankful for all the new people I have met recently, and for all the doors that have opened up for me. When our move to SC fell through I was devastated, to say the least, but I knew that all things happen for a reason, and lookie here, at how much awesomness life has piled on my plate even though things didn't work out quite the way I wanted. :) Choose joy, friends, choose joy, and be an active member in your community! The opportunities open up to you if you open up to them! :) 

If you are interested in joining The Streeter A-list, you can learn more and apply here.